Get Up, Do Stuff, Stay Alive. in And The Rest.

Spoon up the pieces again and swallow them, crunch shards of shattered self between my teeth, breakfast cereal; it’s ok.

Iron my uniform, put on my name badge, turn up to work on time, don’t fall under a train on the way; it’s ok. Go stack those shelves, they ain’t gonna fill themselves. Lugging pallets, race the clock, plug my ears with musical morphine, let my breath come hard and ragged with the rhythm of physical exertion, don’t cut my wrists with the knife in my work bag; it’s ok.

Blur all my lines with vodka, dance on the stage in silly little dresses with People Who Think I’m A Laugh, the next best thing to friends, share cigarettes and grimy nightclub toilet cubicles, share pitchers of lurid-pink cocktails but don’t ever share myself; it’s ok.

Grow up, buy a house, marry a man, be an adult, go get the groceries, eat the bread and the spaghetti and the steak, don’t eat the paracetamol; it’s ok.

It’s ok, it’s ok, I’m living. Tie myself in tight-bound knots with the strings of living life, and hope that they are enough, enough to tie me down, to tie me here.

Self-destruction breathes inside me, it lives in my lungs and steals the air when I inhale. I’ve never known myself without the compulsion, I’ll take myself apart, I’ll wreck myself, I’ll always find a way. I am my own support network and my own worst enemy, I fight myself and hurt myself and hate myself and exhaust myself. I step on ice looking for the answer to myself in other people, I fall through it every time.

I’m too old to be this way, too old for my lifestyle, too old for my life.